Designing a test plan | Define target environment

Define scope and requirements of new design

It is important to gather the business requirements and their scope not only to ensure that we test them but also to review the design and ensure that the design is in accordance with the requirements. That is, the job of performance testers should not start after the site, component, or feature is developed, but at a time while it is being designed.

Identify the scope of the business requirements deriving the new design or a change to the design. For example:

• Is there an additional feature that is being developed or a new site?

• Who is the consumer of the this new feature (for example, administrators or shoppers, and so on)?

• Which environment will host this feature-the staging environment, production environment, or is it a just a productivity tool for the development environment?

• When will this feature be used in relation to the existing peak workload?

• What workload will this feature be a part of (for example, is this part of browse or buy)?

• What is the peak workload and, if this is an additional feature, then what additional workload will this feature generate?

• What are the throughput and response time requirements for the new workload?

• What is the data retention policy and purging frequency, and so on?